Edict of Nantes

Edict of Nantes, law promulgated at Nantes in Brittany on April 13, 1598, by Henry IV of France, which granted a large measure of religious liberty to his Protestant subjects, the Huguenots. The edict was accompanied by Henry IV’s own conversion from Huguenot Calvinism to Roman Catholicism and brought an end to the violent Wars of Religion that began in 1562. The controversial edict was one of the first decrees of religious tolerance in Europe and granted unheard-of religious rights to the French Protestant minority.

The edict upheld Protestants in freedom of conscience and permitted them to hold public worship in many parts of the kingdom, though not in Paris. It granted them full civil rights, including access to education, and established a special court, the Chambre de l’Édit, composed of both Protestants and Catholics, to deal with disputes arising from the edict. Protestant pastors were to be paid by the state and released from certain obligations. Militarily, the Protestants could keep the places they were still holding in August 1597 as strongholds, or places de sûreté, for eight years, the expenses of garrisoning them being met by the king.

The edict also restored Catholicism in all areas where Catholic practice had been interrupted and made any extension of Protestant worship in France legally impossible. Nevertheless, it was much resented by Pope Clement VIII, by the Roman Catholic clergy in France, and by the parlements. Catholics tended to interpret the edict in its most restrictive sense. The Cardinal de Richelieu, who regarded its political and military clauses as a danger to the state, annulled them by the Peace of Alès in 1629. On October 18, 1685, Louis XIV formally revoked the Edict of Nantes and deprived the French Protestants of all religious and civil liberties. Within a few years, more than 400,000 persecuted Huguenots emigrated—to England, Prussia, Holland, and America—depriving France of its most industrious commercial class.